After the showing of “The Army of Darkness,” on Friday, Nov. 2, guest speaker Tom Sullivan conducted an open question and answer session. The following is an excerpt from this; the full question and answer session can be found under the ESG podcast tab.

“What do you find most creatively fulfilling, doing something with a little more of a budget so you have a little more freedom to do things easier? Or do you like to do something where you kind of have to problem solve your way through it?”

“You know no matter how much money you have, it’s always amazing, problems except for the more money, the more pressure there is. And these days there are so many solutions to your special effects problems, and what I found is the cheapest ones are usually the most effective.

“I mean, if you’re looking for bang for your buck kinda of thing, I’ve heard about directors who spend all this money on floods of blood, or something like that, and the thing that gets a big scare is a little simple wound, you know that you did for nothing… But, no budgets don’t really matter, other than hopefully your pay check, you know, you can elaborate on ‘Evil Dead.’”

“What was the one film, or episode, you watched when you were younger and you said, “Gee I wanna make props like whoever’s doing that?’”

“Well, I saw ‘King Kong,’ or at least the first half of it, when I was 5-years-old. My brother and I turned on the 10 a.m. Saturday morning matinee, and there was ‘King Kong.’

“We watched it until the T-Rex/King Kong fight, and Dad was like, ‘Come on guys we gotta go to the lumber yard.’ ‘Oh, Dad, it’s the coolest movie.’

“I didn’t see the end of it until a year later, that’s all I talked about for the next year was dinosaurs and King Kong and how they do this…”

“How do you feel about the rise of digital special effects? I feel something’s kinda lost in the film, in a lot of the horror special effects, like the B movies have kind of dropped off because of the digital special effects versus practical special effects. The question kind of got away from me, just how do you feel about them?”

“Let me take a poll… who prefers… practical effects? Digital effects? Who just likes them both as best as done as they can possibly be? That’s the way I look at it. (both as best as done as they can possibly be).”

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Editor’s Note

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